Robots in the disaster response competition in California must push buttons, turn valves, cut through a wall and drive a light utility vehicle.

The winning design team will collect a $2 million research award along with bragging rights in the rapidly developing robotics industry.

“We get most of our ideas about robotics from science fiction. And we want to show a little bit of science fact,” said Gill Pratt, who organized the competition for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which focuses on futuristic technologies for national security.

The contest runs Friday and Saturday at a Pomona racetrack designed to look like a disaster zone.

The robots may be slow, clumsy and delicate but they might just save lives someday by braving dangerous disaster zones. Pratt cited the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan as an emergency where such robots would have come in handy.

“Sometimes in a disaster, it is too dangerous for people to go in,” he said.

Teams of engineers, programmers and designers from research institutions across the world have worked for years to build robots that can maneuver the course and complete the assigned tasks.

“We have a valve that we need to turn to shut off a gas leak or something similar,” said John Seminatore, a Virginia Tech graduate student with Team Valor. “We have to cut a hole in a wall to get access to something behind it. And there will be either rough terrain or rubble that we get past.”

The most difficult task — getting out of the small utility vehicle — is so hard that many teams aren’t even attempting the dangerous egress, preferring to be docked on their times rather than risk toppling their robot into the dust.

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About

Raquel Maria Dillon is a journalist with a decade of reporting and writing experience. She combines the speed and accuracy of the wire with public radio storytelling sensibilities and the fearlessness of a veteran visual journalist.

Her technical skills and writing voice have been honed by hourly deadlines and daily field reporting. She has an innate sense of what makes a good story, in video, words, sound, or whatever comes next.

About

Raquel Maria Dillon is a journalist with a decade of reporting and writing experience. She combines the speed and accuracy of the wire with public radio storytelling sensibilities and the fearlessness of a veteran visual journalist.

Her technical skills and writing voice have been honed by hourly deadlines and daily field reporting. She has an innate sense of what makes a good story, in video, words, sound, or whatever comes next.